Why Trump?

“We’ve got to enforce our border, go to enforce our laws. But there are people willing to do jobs Americans aren’t willing to do. Lots of Americans don’t want to pick cotton in 105 degrees, but there are people who want to put food on their family’s table, and are willing to do that.

We ought to be able to say thank you, and to welcome them. Have a plan in place that enables workers to do work Americans won’t do.

When there’s a populist sentiment it makes it harder to get that kind of issue resolved.”

George W. Bush, Speech in Dubai, February 8, 2018

George W. Bush in a speech in Dubai last week unintentionally helped explain why Donald Trump is President. My favorite living historian Victor Davis Hanson gives us the details:

While in Dubai, Bush criticized the Trump Administration’s lack of progress on immigration reform. Then he weirdly noted, “Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want to put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that.”

Where to start when Republican elites confirm their own stereotypes?

First, Republicans should agree with Churchill’s dictum about the inadvisability of criticizing one’s government while in a foreign country: “When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the Government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.” Bush repeatedly followed that guidance when he insisted that he would not attack Barack Obama—even at home. But not now.

Second, Bush is far more critical of Trump’s efforts to reach a compromise on DACA and border security than he was of Barack Obama’s illegal and politically expedient 2012 pre-reelection executive order nullifying immigration law and enforcement. Whether he intended it or not, Bush’s “woke” emergence as a megaphone after eight years of hibernation, confirms the impression that Republican elites were always much closer in spirit to their Democratic counterparts than they were to their own so-called grassroots conservative base. Translated, they mildly were displeased with the Obama agenda, but loathe Trump’s.

Third, how incoherent were Bush’s cotton-picking riffs! (He may not have realized it, but Bush put a 21st-century spin on 19th-century plantation owners’ pleas that they needed imported chattel African labor because American workers were neither acclimatized to heat nor inexpensive enough to pick cotton in scorching Southern temperatures). Bush substantiated the stereotype of crass corporate concern (note the inadvertent contempt in “willing to do that”) that trumps both the law and the idea of promoting the wages of U.S. entry-level workers—as well as general popular cluelessness about illegal immigration in general.

To wit, cotton picking (which I used to do as a child in the 1960s on my father’s small 40-acre cotton allotment) has been widely mechanized for over 50 years. And agriculture now only accounts for about 10-20 percent of illegal alien labor.

Mechanization has revolutionized farming, even in crops once deemed impossible to automate such as nuts, olives, raisins, and delicate Napa Valley wine grapes. New computerized and laser-calibrated breakthroughs will likely mean that even soft fruit and vegetables will soon be mechanically picked, matching ongoing labor reduction in weeding and irrigation.

More importantly, it was not just the Trump tax and deregulatory reforms that have fueled economic growth and prompted workers’ wages to rise, but also the substantial drop in illegal immigration. In the new psychological climate that’s followed, employers are beginning to believe it is no longer worth the risk to hire illegal aliens, as they scour the economy to find citizen workers (in the inner city, the red state postindustrial swath, and the barrio) and pay them more to reenter the workforce.

When the country has a 63 percent labor participation rate, there are more able-bodied workers than we assume, even as unemployment measured by traditional rubrics is about to fall below 4 percent.

The old Republican idea that illegal immigration is a good thing because noble foreign nationals work hard and cheaply for businesses in a way unemployed Americans “will not do” is not a sustainable factual, ethical, or political position. About half of illegal immigrant households use some sort of government assistance, for example.

Mechanization, automation, and higher wages for labor are the future of the American workforce. If we learned anything from the 2016 election it is that we should reject the calcified idea of corporate importation of inexpensive laborers from impoverished countries, profiting from their peak productive years, and then as they age, tire, and become ill, passing them on to the social welfare industry to rely on taxpayer-subsidized health, legal, and education services—even as firms seek out yet a new, young, and recyclable cohort from Mexico and Latin America.

Go here to read the rest. There are few policies that are more class driven in the US than immigration. Liberal elites want future voters. Republican elites, I cannot call them conservative, want cheap labor. All of these elites know that, in all likelihood, they and their offspring will not be directly affected by the criminal gangs that are always active among illegal aliens, that they will not have to wait for treatment in emergency rooms swamped with nonpaying illegal aliens, that they will not see their kids’ schools go downhill trying to educate the children of illegal aliens, that they will not lose their jobs as cheap illegal aliens are used in preference to higher paid Americans. In short, elites get what they want and the tab is paid for by the middle class and poor Americans. If Americans dare speak out about this they are condemned as racists and Nazis. It is not a wonder that Trump got elected, the wonder is that it did not happen long ago.

Oh, and on a personal note, when I was a teenager and in my early twenties I often did agricultural labor during the Summer, no matter how hot and humid it got, Central Illinois often gets very hot and humid indeed in the Summer, and I was glad to have the job. Bush insulted the American worker with either lies or sheer ignorance.

13 Comments

Bush insulted all people of intelligence when he campaigned on the phrase “compassionate conservative”. Conservatism, by definition, is compassionate. It’s for the same reason why I hate the phrase, “tough love”. Love is sufficient. Sometimes it has to be “tough”, but that doesn’t change what it is. Bush had his moment, gave us Obama and needs to just go away. His recent remarks in Dubai literally changed no minds on the subject of illegal immigration. He is just another elitist.

Suppose you were a Bush. And, suppose you were an idiot. But, I repeat myself. H. W. was no better. He blew 90+% favorable ratings and lost reelection to an Arkansas rapist.

W possessed only two qualifications. He wasn’t Gore. And, he wasn’t Kerry.

He did not enforce immigration laws. Nineteen Saudis committed 9/11 and he bombed Afghanistan (16+years and the blood-thirsty maniacs still don’t think we’re serious). Then, he saddled us with the tragic, unnecessary Iraq War, the Patriot Act/FISA courts, “no child left behind,” Medicare Part D, etc. .

Trump is an outsider. It all makes sense when you realize the elites (academics, democrats, media, and big government/open-borders/chamber of commerce republicans, and assorted blood-suckers) use you and hate you.

I can’t seem to find an actual transcript– just short chunks with “explanations” of what he “really meant;” the actual text here works fine with “fix the d*** immigration system already,” rather than being about illegals.

Seriously, check out the source for, with AP’s characterization of Trump wanting a “warmer relation” with Russia? Gee, warmer than “I’ll have more leeway after the election” and giving them a sweetheart deal on uranium? It’st true that Russia meddled– they really like chaos in the US. That’s why they false-flagged a black lives matter Pokemon event and other junk. (Yes, really.)
The comments that are definitely about illegals are…well, in line with what Trump has said.
I’m a heck of a lot harsher than Trump on that– largely because I realize the evidence that these folks are what they claim is just not there, generally– but that doesn’t make W an idiot for agreeing with Trump.

*******

T. Shaw, we bombed Afghanistan because we had legal justification for it; the Saudi prince twits that supported the attacks were (and are) supporting other groups, and frankly those psycho princelings would probably be delighted if they managed to weaken the guys that weren’t letting them have real power.
Attacking their home country would be like trying to draw a connection between Prince Harry’s fiance (he is the one that’s just engaged, right?) and UK gov’t policy. Soon, there might be a slightly more sane organization in place in Saudi Arabia– some interesting stuff happening, for sure– but it’s frankly hard to take seriously the whole “nose-count the citizenship of those that attacked and go for it.”

Even if that method would irresistibly lead to something I think we really should recognize– that Mexico is a failed state that imports massive numbers of terrorists and has a gov’t that is largely controlled by terrorist groups known as “cartels.” The reason we have not recognized it, even though it fits all legal requirements and then some, is because it would require some really massive changes and actions. The counter-argument that they aren’t there for ideology, they’re there to make money, falls flat in the face of what recognized terror groups do.

Related, heard today from– once again!– the AP that Trump “just admitted” that the “tax cuts will cost more than they save.”

Example that is almost word for word what keeps showing up:The president’s spending outline for the first time acknowledges that the Republican tax overhaul passed last year would add billions to the deficit and not “pay for itself” as Trump and his Republican allies asserted.

I cannot find anything even close to this besides some similar claims from December; it would guess, from attempting to read between the lines, that he used the same tax income forecast that they came up with for estimating tax revenue when the tax cuts passed and it’s included in this bill. Like every single other time, where they pretend that nobody changes any behavior based on taxes, at all, so raising the taxes ALWAYS gets exactly that much more income, rather than the historically supported drop in tax income.

Bush, John McCain, and Lindsay Graham have an odd emotional commitment to refusing to enforce the immigration laws. This is manifest in either impugning the character of their critics or in making stupid arguments. Bush specializes in the latter. Agricultural labor accounts for 0.26% of the domestic workforce, and, as always, the wages and working conditions people accept are a function of their other options.

The Bushes have been fantastic disappointments of late. The use of the IRS to harass the political opposition (and the use of the Department of Justice to protect the IRS) provoked not one stray comment from them. Now that BO is out of office, we get to hear from them.

I forgot to list W’s (he was not alone – Everybody was making money!) role in helping (not mitigating) inflate the housing bubble, the subprime mortgage catastrophe, the financial panic, and the great recession.

I love you, man.

As usual, you’re right. My point was the Bushes stink, as do the big government/chamber of commerce/Never Trump/no-different-than-Democrat/open-borders GOP elites. Now that Trump, not BHO, is in the WH, they crawl out of their holes and show their true colors.

Give the illegal aliens your citizenship and your house and your job and your benefits.They will fit right in. Starting with Linda Sansour, G. W. Bush, Hillary and the like all need to assume responsibility and render their citizenship to alleviate the illegality of illegal invaders.
The precedent is set in court where any person can serve a criminal’s sentence outside of the death penalty.
Hillary and G. W. and especially the loud mouthed Linda Sansour can go an a perpetual hiatus in Venezuela or Iran.